


Shaking Apart and Coming Back Together

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Series: Finding Home Away From Home (GQ/Enby Dean Winchester with Shadow Moon Fics) [36]
Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Established Relationship, Fae Dean Winchester, Healthy Relationships, Non-Binary Dean Winchester, Other, POV Second Person, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queerplatonic Relationships, Timestamp, Trans Dean Winchester, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, not a stand alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 00:54:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19937341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: Because long after the healing has begun, things can still happen.





	Shaking Apart and Coming Back Together

**Author's Note:**

> I have always wanted this 'verse to hit 40k, and for that purely selfish reason here's a timestamp. (I will probably keep adding these as my brain comes back to enby Winchester, but. Not at this pace. Every once in a while maybe. Maybe.)

Sometimes, Shadow can still come shaking apart. Either one of you can, really. It’s not that surprising, with your cobbled-together life, always on the edges of everything, like shadows always are. The two of you fell in step because of the ways that you were taught to be the people that you are. All of the rest you through together by helping each other heal. But that doesn’t mean the job was done perfectly. That doesn’t mean there are no cracks in the facade.

You curl up at home with hot drinks, and the knowledge that at first it might have been weird for Shadow that horror movies are comfort, but they are, and so sometimes it is what you do together then.

You have taken up baking, so that you can provide the household with its own treats, and when Shadow’s well enough he uses the blessings that you taught him and the ones you both learned together. 

You don’t bake for work, or for what it might give to you.

You bake for Shadow.

And he blesses the baking for you because of course he would do that, after all this time.

Still, sometimes all of your well-intentioned tricks do absolutely zero for him, or either of you. Panic attacks still happen. And sometimes one or both of you are miserably seeking spiritual connection, finding nothing. Even when you know much better than that.

It may be there, and it may be foolproof, but you’re both flawed, empty sometimes, scared, and just living on earth.

If Shadow is shaking apart then you’ll join him wherever he is, however he needs. And if you come apart a little bit in the process, well, he knows how that goes and you’ll both pull yourselves together and decide what it meant to learn something from that particular hellscape.

Oh, yeah. You’re old pros. Tired sometimes, and unsure of your footing, but you’ll get it all back together one of these days.

Of course, life is a bit like jello. Seems like you can get it all nice and neat, but it’s jiggly and liable to squirt apart in any direction when pressure is applied.

Food metaphors. You’re pretty into them, and you have lots.

You were a chef for a while, after all.

And, yes, you’re now the living, breathing, admits-it-and-everything embodiment of a faerie.

Not to be a cliche or anything like that, it just happened that way, and it’s taken forever to deal with and just live the best you can, but you’re finally doing that.

A born and bred Winchester faerie in service to the Old Gods.

And yourself, of course.

That was maybe the hardest part to accept. That you weren’t here to fix Shadow, or to fix the Allfather, or to save the world (although you’ve done plenty that comes close). 

It turns out the world saves itself, whether humans are on it or not.

But you’ll just keep being you, and picking up the panicked messes that happen at your place with Shadow, out in the trees. No one hides forever, least of all two people like you and him. You still go to actions, and you still panic quietly at home, and then you try to hit every reset button you know how. 

That’s the way things are. It’s the way you know how to be, together.


End file.
